Has the D-word been “banished from the Obama administration’s public vocabulary“? Or is it the case, as one democracy assistance practitioner contends, that it will prove difficult to jettison a policy that “survived the post-Vietnam era and the Cold War”?
The Obama administration has yet to make the key democracy-related staff appointments in either the State Department or the National Security Council so it is too early to suggest that it has developed a settled approach. But it “is going to have to figure this out because you can’t conduct a foreign policy without it,” says Lorne Craner, president of the International Republican Institute.
His Democratic counterpart, Kenneth Wollack, president of the National Democratic Institute, is skeptical that the Obama administration will downplay or downgrade democracy promotion as a foreign policy imperative. “They’re trying to recalibrate,” he suggests.
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